Vancouver locals air grave concerns about affordability

In a Wednesday (March 16) town hall organized by NDP MLA David Eby, hundreds of Vancouver locals voiced out their pressing concerns on the issue of affordability, amid several years of continuous real estate price increases in the city.

With year-over-year average costs rising by as much as 30 to 40 per cent, the region has seen its fair share of middle class households being gradually pushed out of the market.

Among these is the family of 48-year-old Anne Delgiglio, who recently completed the sale of their North Vancouver property.

“We were trying to downsize, but there was nothing really to downsize to. We didn't know the market was going to go crazy,” Delgiglio said in the forum, as quoted by CBC News.

“I don't know how local people are paying for it. I just don't understand,” she added.

These concerns seemed to be representative of a majority of long-time Vancouver residents like 50-year-old Michel Leblanc, who said that he is seriously contemplating living off the grid or on a boat after foregoing his previous plans of purchasing a home in the city.

“The prices have just been going up and up and up, so I pretty much abandoned any prospect in the past year or so,” Leblanc said. “It's hard to know if there's even any incentive to stay in Vancouver.”

Others, like 68-year-old Barb Sutherland, mentioned that they were fortunate to have purchased their homes early on, but are extremely apprehensive about the next generation’s prospects.

“My two children cannot afford to live in Vancouver, and I think it's really important we be able to live in our own communities and work in the same communities. As a retired person, I've watched this huge growth in what my house is worth, and I would be very willing to have the house prices go down somewhat if it meant that young families could move in,” Sutherland said.

Don't you feel sorry for those people owning homes there, like Ms Sutherland, and others? She could sell her home and make her children millionaires, for gawd's sake. How bad is that? What utter BS is this article, anyway!

Wayne Campbell, Prince Georgeon
2016-03-22 11:28:51 AM

In most of BC (outside of Vancouver) you can have a very nice home for $300K to $400K with a 15 minute commute to work. Vancouver people are missing out on quality of life!

Ron Butler on
2016-03-22 1:17:24 PM

The jobs are in the Lower Mainland so there is a need to have homes in that area for the people who work there. Home affordability is a legitimate issue, at least in London and Manhattan people live in the homes they own, part of the time anyway; on some prime streets in the Lower Mainland homes are empty. Let's not make fun of people who want their children to live where they grew up. It main not be economically possible but people have right to question it.